


Herb Garden

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Political Animals, Revolution (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover Pairings, M/M, Timestamp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 12:25:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3977941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when Miles decides he needs Bass back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Herb Garden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BeaRyan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaRyan/gifts), [swietlik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/swietlik/gifts), [Timid_Timbuktu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Timid_Timbuktu/gifts).



> Dear friends, I don't know what this is because it is - in some way - a sequel to [Politically Bent](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1542632). Except "Politically Bent" didn't need a sequel and there was no way a sequel was going to ever be as good as the original ;). So please have this time stamp in which I try to work out some personal issues. It's actually canon-compliant through whatever we've seen of the Revolution comics so far (Endgame Part 2).

Texas was a shitty place to leave your heart. But Bass didn’t live in a Russian fairy tale where he could afford to hide his heart in a needle, in an egg, in a duck, in a rabbit, in a tree, or whatever. So he left it with a man, in a shack, in a garden, in a forest, in Texas. (He really didn’t want to think too hard about that garden.)

The bruises in the shape of TJ’s fingers took weeks to fade from his arms, and when the last yellowing imprint dissipated into the canvass of his skin, he shut his eyes and tried to forget the way the kid’s eyelashes felt fluttering against his face while they kissed too. Sometimes you have to forget the secret you want most dearly to keep.

That Miles had grown weary of Rachel’s endless stream of wheedling and mindfucks had not been a surprise. Neither was him showing up in the ass crack hours of dawn, Charlie in tow, claiming he’d come to retrieve his stolen wagon. (With the guy who stole it, no less.) The fact that apparently Gene Porter, Shitty MD, had breathed his last, on the other hand, _had_ been a pleasant surprise and a heartening piece of news. Bass liked to think he’d probably finally mistaken his maggots for leeches, or a death cap for a chanterelle, or (and this idea Bass truly relished) a rifle for a toothbrush.

Young Charlotte had side-eyed TJ, who never did learn to wear his shirt on his actual torso as the Lord intended, much to Bass’ delight.

“Where’d you find _him_?” She had taken to using her crossbow as a pointer.

“I picked him out of a catalogue.” She wouldn’t get it, but TJ did, dissolving into a peal of laughter that would’ve sounded hysterical to a casual observer.

“Quit fucking around, Bass.” Miles had looked distinctly uncomfortable. Bass could tell he hadn’t expected to find him keeping company with a Hammond, and a pretty one at that. “We need you.”

TJ looked on the verge of offering refreshments but Bass couldn’t take the chance that the tea might have come from the wrong bush in the garden. He wrapped his fingers around the kid’s wrist and pressed gently.

TJ’s garden would have been the death of old Gene. It was an aesthetically pleasant refuge in which partridgeberries and wintergreen berries grew side by side with yew berries and holly. It was a fine balance between another “vision quest” and dispatching unwanted guests. TJ said he abhorred violence, as Bass licked berry juice off his fingers, and secretly told God that he would be only too happy to die at that kid’s hand. Surely, trust would be the most appropriate death of him. But he could never help but trust the one he loved. It seemed instinctive, despite all evidence to the contrary.

“I won’t let you go back to him,” TJ’s fingers pressed those future, lovely bruises into his skin.

“I’m not going back to him. I’m just… going. For now.”

When had the kid learned to play his body like a musical instrument? In the night, with Charlie and Miles asleep outside in the retrieved wagon, TJ mapped out the litany of scars with his fingers and lips, as if trying to memorize the landscape of Bass’ entire being, before bringing himself to let him go. They had learned to read each other’s histories in their scars, and somehow predict their future in the unblemished patches of skin in between.

“I’ll come back for you,” Bass promised, face buried between TJ’s thighs, the scratch of his ungroomed scruff leaving a burn against the sensitive flesh. Tongue and teeth leaving lazily, slowly imprinted marks into the creamy skin. In the coming weeks, he would think of those marks fading as the phantoms of TJ’s fingers disappeared, a little bit less present with each subsequent look.

His bones felt light underneath his skin with the weightlessness of not caring. He couldn’t even be bothered to sass Rachel or shoot looks of disdain at Aaron. “Just tell me where to stab so I can go home,” he’d said to Miles over a shared flask of pilfered bourbon. 

_Home_. There was a time that being at Miles’ side would’ve been home enough. A time when he would’ve blindly followed his childhood friend’s lead into the very tar pits of hell. Not anymore. Not even with the ghost taste of Miles’ lips on the flask - that gesture alone would have kept him going for weeks back in the day - not even when their fingers brushed as the booze was passed from one man to another. Sure, there was still something to be said for the camaraderie and their ability to move in perfect synch in midst of slaughter. A finely choreographed ballet of death with Generals Matheson and Monroe in the role of the prima donnas. But even when it came to the slaughter itself, Bass’ heart wasn’t in it. Couldn’t have been. Because he’d left it back in Texas, buried somewhere in the vicinity of TJ’s lips.

“You should stay and help us rebuild,” Miles had said when the war was over, avoiding Bass’ eyes. It pissed him the fuck off that after everything Miles still couldn’t just ask for what he wanted.

“I… can’t,” Bass stated, surprising himself a bit. So much water and blood under the bridge, and the bridge itself blown to smithereens, and yet there was a part of him that without a doubt still belonged to that old coot with the drinking problem and shitty hair.

“You _can’t_?” Miles finally managed to lift his eyes to meet Bass’ steel gaze.

“And neither can you, Miles,” Bass sighed. “You can’t have your cake and eat it too. And I, for once, am not gonna let you.”

Miles chewed his lower lip. “‘Cuz of that Hammond kid?”

Bass shrugged. “Because of _us_ , Miles. I’ll always ask you for more than you can give, and you’ll always ask me for more than you know you should.”

“But not him?”

“He doesn’t give me emotional whiplash.”

“Jesus, Bass, what a glowing endorsement. You should put a ring on it.”

Bass smiled and looked away. Maybe he would put a ring on TJ, a collar of hickeys all around that supple, swanlike neck. A ring of rope burn all around his self-ravaged wrists. He’d already found some way to tether TJ to this world, to himself, and through that ownership to give the kid’s life back to him.

“Come on, Miles. We’re too old for these dramatic fits of jealousy.”

Far too old, and too tired of fighting. Miles didn’t argue, only pressed Bass’ hand with his own, a familiar calloused hand from decades of handling every weapon known to man. Bass had to wonder how many of those scars that TJ’s mouth had kissed had been put there by or because of Miles.

This time, Charlie had handed the wagon over to him, with a wink.

“There’s no fun in taking it in broad daylight,” Bass gave her a weak smile which she met with an open gaze. She had been General Matheson too, as sure as Miles had been. A war weathered warrior, giving him his leave as the sun broke upon the horizon.

“He’ll miss you,” she said, her hand pausing as she pressed the reins into his palm. 

“Charlotte…” he wanted to say something, perhaps pithy or sarcastic, something for her to remember him by that wouldn’t be too cheesy or too assholish - a fine line to walk.

“I’ll miss you too,” she added, pulling him in by the arm and pressing her taught body against his.

Okay so maybe he didn’t hate the Mathesons equally. This one could live. Bass pressed his hand along the wiry muscles of her back, pulling her in tightly. 

“You keep an eye on that crazy asshole,” she laughed when they parted. “I had a little walk in his garden, Bass, and I know the difference between mint and snakeroot!”

“Well, if you ever get bored with running the country, you can come visit us anytime. I’m sure TJ would appreciate your gardening expertise.”

It was a long road back to Texas from what was left of DC, but a rather uneventful one. Except for that one time he had to stop to have one of the wheels mended, it was as if God himself had parted the sands and seas so he could make good time getting back. With electricity being officially back “on”, it was only a matter of rebuilding the infrastructure and technology they had lost, which made the distance seem suddenly more manageable. Still, he hoped Rachel would eventually find a way to reinvent cell phones. TJ would have taken amazing selfies.

Some of the discreet markers they have set along the way to the cabin had been worn away, but Bass still found his way through the forest before the sun began to set on the final day of his journey. At the possibility of finding the place empty, his heart constricted painfully in his chest, making him swallow around the lump of fear so solid that he almost choked. The closer he got to the cabin, the bigger the lump got, as if every thought he’d gone out of his way to chase away on his journey was suddenly breaking down the walls so carefully erected inside his mind.

The cabin was intact. The door looked well secured. Tethering the horses where they were used to being corralled, Bass approached their little construction. It looked a lot more heavily reinforced since his departure and he smiled to himself. TJ was so much more than a pretty face (and an expert poisoner).

He knocked, not wanting to risk a chest full of rock salt. The door creaked on its hinges, revealing a scruffy and bedheaded blue-eyed menace, all wrapped up in a heavy, wooly monstrosity.

“What the hell? You’re wearing a sweater,” Bass chuckled, despite himself.

“It’s fucking _November_ , Bass.” The kid had reached out and laced his long fingers into the leather folds of Bass’ well-worn jacket. How Bass had missed those musician’s fingers.

“And I see you’ve gone part lumberjack,” Bass traced his fingers along the overgrown scruff of the younger man’s neck, looking for the hidden indentation in the middle of his chin.

“I missed your stupid asshole face,” TJ whispered, pulling Bass into a searing kiss, slamming him against the reinforced door frame with youthful gusto.

“I missed all of you,” Bass confessed, burying his face in the warmth of the skin of TJ’s neck, in the scratchy feel of the ugly sweater that hid the solid and welcoming planes of his lover’s body.

He did. He missed it. This feeling of not being needed but being wanted despite it all. This knowledge that he was loved just because he existed, with a love that asked for nothing other than to be allowed to take root, to flourish. Just like poisonous plants could root and flourish next to medicinal herbs in TJ’s garden, they too could entwine and grow.

“I made us a new bed,” TJ declared with a twinkle in his eye once he had finished kissing Bass’ lips raw. “I can’t wait to test it out now that you’re back.”

Bass was speechless, only his hands kept trying to put words into gestures and stroke every unspoken emotion into the familiar suppleness of TJ’s skin.

“You _are_ back, aren’t you? For good?”

TJ’s skin smelled of earth and sap and rain-soaked pine needles. Bass’ breath caught in his throat and his eyes burned.

“For good,” he finally uttered.

“Good.” 

TJ laced their fingers together and shifted his body to pull Bass behind him into the cabin. The earth seemed to shift beneath his feet and a sudden dizziness overtook him. He was falling, but for the first time in his life, he wasn’t afraid of what would happen once he hit the ground. Besides, TJ would catch him. That’s how you play the game of trust.


End file.
